Waiting for Another Tet

It is mid-February. Shortly before President Nixon flies off on his historic visit to China, all hell suddenly breaks loose in South Viet Nam. From the DMZ to the Delta, North Vietnamese troops raid towns, rocket cities, throw Saigon's forces into confusion. In the vulnerable Central Highlands, the Communists capture the inland city of Kontum and then sweep on to the seacoast, slicing the country in two.

The fighting crackles on for days. The jittery Laotian government starts negotiations with the Communists and withdraws the 1963 "request" that permits the U.S. to bomb the North Vietnamese infiltration routes in Laos. In the U.S., public opinion is electrified by a series of shocking South Vietnamese defeats. The doves of the Senate take wing once again. Half a dozen Democratic presidential aspirants declare Vietnamization a farce, demand an immediate US. pullout, and gleefully await the President's humiliation in the primaries.

MOST U.S. military men would insist that such a scenario is Hanoi's wildest dream, not Washington's probable nightmare. But almost overnight, the battlefield situation in Indochina has quickened to the point where the Administration is reminding people that there is still a war going on. In Saigon last week, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker flatly warned a group of businessmen to expect "heavy fighting before long." In Washington, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird recently said that the Communists have "advertised an offensive as they have advertised no other offensive in Viet Nam." The White House has been encouraging such forecasts of trouble, for obvious reasons. Richard Nixon is taking no chances that the U.S. public will be surprised by a bloody flare-up in South Viet Nam--as it was, with fatal consequences for the Johnson Administration, in the Tet offensive of February 1968.

The Laotian situation has already turned ominous; last week, as enemy forces cut the road between Vientiane and Luang Prabang, the royal capital, Premier Souvanna Phouma was reported to be wondering gloomily whether "we'll have to give up." But when would the predicted offensive begin in South Viet Nam, which remains Hanoi's main objective? There is some speculation that the Communist troops poised along the country's borders may not move for months, preferring to psych Saigon with what the military calls a "credible threat" rather than risk heavy casualties in an open fight. But most of the experts predict trouble for next month--specifically, around Feb. 15, the beginning of the three-day Tet lunar New Year celebration. Says Lieut. Colonel Robert Brownlee, a U.S. adviser attached to a South Vietnamese regiment in the Central Highlands: "The enemy's got a new goddamn division and three good regiments across the border in this area, and Tet is coming and Nixon's going to Peking. If I were a Communist political commander I'd say screw the casualties and hit 'em."

For some time, Hanoi has been making meticulous preparations to do just that. Four North Vietnamese divisions are stationed along South Viet Nam's northern borders within easy reach of newly built roads running into the country across the Laotian border and through the Demilitarized Zone. Hanoi's crack 320th Division has been spotted moving south, along with some 50 tanks, toward South Viet Nam's weak Military Region II (the Central Highlands), where the main Communist thrust is expected. Already, three North Vietnamese regiments are grouped in Binh Dinh province, which is rated as the least secure of the country's 44 provinces. There General Ngo Dzu, the area commander, expects the Communists to attempt "popular uprisings" in the style of Tet 1968.

Classic Defense. Militarily, Saigon has been drawing its forces into a classic defense: main-force units and ranger battalions on the border, less reliable auxiliaries around the cities and towns. More than 10,000 South Vietnamese troops last week began scouring the border areas northwest of Saigon for signs of three North Vietnamese divisions known to be poised just inside Cambodia. Meanwhile, the air war continues. B-52 bombers have been striking Communist concentrations in the Highlands. Over North Viet Nam, a U.S. F-4 Phantom jet accounted for the first "kill" of an enemy MIG-21 in 22 months, but Communist gunners also downed two American F-4s--bringing to 13 the total of planes lost since mid-December.

How much trouble could the Communists cause in South Viet Nam? The U.S. command believes that any offensive will fail, partly because the Viet Cong structure is currently so weak that the North Vietnamese army will be fighting virtually alone. American military experts also concede, though, that the NVA could wreak some "spectaculars," including the seizure of some towns. Even Defense Secretary Laird, who claims 100% confidence in Vietnamization, predicts only that Saigon's troops will win 75% of its battles.

A more important question is why the Communists would want to attack in 1972, instead of waiting a year for U.S. withdrawal to run its course. An offensive timed to the President's Peking visit would clearly be a signal from Hanoi that it will not tolerate any possible deal on Viet Nam cooked up by the U.S. and China. Beyond that, some Pentagon officials are convinced that the Communists want the psychological benefit of a "visible victory." According to this theory, Hanoi and the Viet Cong have decided not to settle for a unilateral American withdrawal, which the world might interpret as simply a political decision made by the White House. Instead, the Communists want a tangible triumph, a la Dienbienphu, which they can hold up as their own.

Still another theory is that the North Vietnamese have simply miscalculated the state of American feeling about the war. Recent foreign visitors to Hanoi have been surprised by the attitudes of North Vietnamese leaders, who seem to be convinced that the same antiwar genie that toppled Lyndon Johnson in 1968 can be rubbed back to life and turned against Richard Nixon this year. That suggests that, much as the U.S. misread the North Vietnamese when the massive American intervention in Indochina began, the North Vietnamese may now be misreading the U.S.

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